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Yesterday I received an email from OverDrive with an attachment titled "OverDrive Partner Library Update from Steve Potash", I glanced at it and filed it away in my to-read pile for a later date (which honestly means I may never have gotten to it). This morning Heather Braum brought it to my attention via this post by Joe Atzberger.
The contents of this document are spun in a positive way and there are some great things coming from OverDrive, but in between the good news is some bad news, some really bad news.
The first bit – ownership of ebooks will now expire after a certain number of check outs to patrons. Libraries may no longer own them forever and ever. This is unbelievable! And a HUGE step backwards in lending rights and library access.
The past several months have brought about dramatic changes for the print and eBook publishing and retail industries. Digital book sales are now a significant percentage of all publisher and author revenue. As a result several trade publishers are re-evaluating eBook licensing terms for library lending services. Publishers are expressing concern and debating their digital future where a single eBook license to a library may never expire, never wear out, and never need replacement.
OverDrive is advocating on behalf of your readers to have access to the widest catalog of the best copyrighted, premium materials, and lending options. To provide you with the best options, we have been required to accept and accommodate new terms for eBook lending as established by certain publishers. Next week, OverDrive will communicate a licensing change from a publisher that, while still operating under the one-copy/one-user model, will include a checkout limit for each eBook licensed. Under this publisher's requirement, for every new eBook licensed, the library (and the OverDrive platform) will make the eBook available to one customer at a time until the total number of permitted checkouts is reached. This eBook lending condition will be required of all eBook vendors or distributors offering this publisher's titles for library lending (not just OverDrive).
The second bit of bad news – publishers want to meddle in your library card policies.
In addition, our publishing partners have expressed concerns regarding the card issuance policies and qualification of patrons who have access to OverDrive supplied digital content. Addressing these concerns will require OverDrive and our library partners to cooperate to honor geographic and territorial rights for digital book lending, as well as to review and audit policies regarding an eBook borrower's relationship to the library (i.e. customer lives, works, attends school in service area, etc.). I can assure you OverDrive is not interested in managing or having any say in your library policies and issues. Select publisher terms and conditions require us to work toward their comfort that the library eBook lending is in compliance with publisher requirements on these topics.
OverDrive Partner Library Update from Steve Potash (pdf)
Update 1:05pm EST: HarperCollins is the publisher that forced this issue. From Library Journal HarperCollins Puts 26 Loan Cap on Ebook Circulations
Update 3:45pm EST: If you wanna follow the outrage on Twitter the hashtag is #hcod
Update 3.1.2011 2:20 pm est A message from OverDrive on HarperCollins' new eBook licensing terms – OverDrive publicly responds to the uproar.
Update 3.2.2011 5:45am est Open Letter to Librarians a message from HarperCollins
Update 3.1.2011 6:00am EST I am no longer updating this page with links. I am still bookmarking all posts on delicious. You can find new links under the tag hcod, you can find new links related to the boycott under the tag hcodboycott.
From Outside Libraryland
- Fury over 'stupid' restrictions to library ebook loans from The Guardian (added 3.2.2011 6:45am est)
- The 27th Patron from HarperCollins Author, Marilyn Johnson (added 3.2.2011 5:45am est)
- HarperCollins' digital lending cap sparks lively discussion – O'Reilly Radar (added 3.2.2011 5:45am est)
- Limits on library e-books stir controversy, Christian Science Monitor (added 2.28.2011 2:45pm est)
- A Limit on Lending E-Books, New York Times (added 2.28.2011 5:25am est)
- Are Libraries Locked Out of the E-book World? (added 2.28.2011 5:25am est)
- HarperCollins Library eBook Policies Generate Protests
- Congratulations HarperCollins – you just guaranteed Amazon and Kindle will win the eBook & eReader war | Literary Sluts – We'll go to bed with any book!
- HarperCollins in cagematch with Macmillan to see who can alienate readers better | Dear Author
- HarperCollins Seeks to Limit Digital Lending, Access Patron Data, Generally Piss Off Readers
- HarperCollins to Libraries: we will nuke your ebooks after 26 checkouts BoingBoing
- This Library E-Book Will Self-Destruct After 26 Check Outs Read Write Web
- On eating your corn seed from an author
From Librarians:
- HarperCollins hit by several types of stupid stick by Phil Bradley (added 3.2.2011 6:45am est)
- On Boycotts and Readers' Rights by Kate Sheehan (added 3.2.2011 5:45am est)
- A Library Written in Disappearing Ink By Barbara Fister (added 3.2.2011 5:45am est)
- What is a Limited-Check-Out eBook Worth?: Two Polls take these polls from Eric Hellman (added 3.2.2011 5:45am est)
- Open Letter to HarperCollins & Readers of eBooks from Pioneer Library System (added 3.2.2011 5:45am est)
- My thoughts on the Harper Collins/Overdrive controversy by Meredith Farkas (added 3.2.2011 5:45am est)
- It Is Time To Negotiate Change by Char Mairn (added 3.2.2011 5:45am est)
- HCOD, eBook User Bill of Rights and Math by Sarah Glassmeyer – a good look at some numbers (added 3.2.2011 5:45am est)
- Thank you Harper Collins (for making the path forward a little clearer) (added 2.28.2011 2:45pm est)
- My email to HarperCollins by Toby Greenwalt (added 2.28.2011 5:25am est)
- What eBook reaction best serves our patrons? by Heather Braum (added 2.28.2011 5:25am est)
- The Beginning of What Could Be the End: Harper Collins & OverDrive – The E-Book Debacle (added 2.28.2011 5:25am est)
- Terms of Service on Our Terms by Toby Greenwalt (added 5:40am est)
- Phallic Snorer and the number 26 by John Kirriemuir (added 5:40am est)
- 28 Days of Tech #26: eBook dilemmas from YALSA (added 5:40am est)
- Really, HarperCollins? by Kate Sheehan (added 2.26.2011 6:45pm est)
- My view: An open letter to OverDrive (added 2.26.2011 6:45pm est)
- Discriminating Against Libraries, 26 eBook Circs by Heather Braum (updated 2.26.2011 6:15pm est)
- The Publisher That Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Toby Greenwalt – (updated 2.26.2011 1:20pm est) leave a comment on Toby's post if you contact any of the authors at HarperCollins, MacMillan or Simon & Schuster
- All Your ebooks are belong to us – for a fee by David Lee King at Library Renewal(added 2.26.2011 1:00pm est)
- A New eBook Challenge: Can Publishers and Libraries Find Compromise? (added 2.26.2011 11:00 am est)
- 26 Sad Steps by Tom Peters (added 2.26.2011 10:05 am est)
- Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal by Jason Griffey at Library Renewal(added 2.26.2011 9:15 am est)
- I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further by Matt Weaver at Library Renewal(added 2.26.2011 9:15 am est)
- HarperCollins and the Suspension of eBook Disbelief by Eric Hellman (added 2.26.2011 9:15 am est)
- HarperCollins' Memento Plan: Short-Term Greed versus Long-Term Culture by Karen Schneider (added 2.26.2011 9:15 am est)
- If I Can't Own a Book, I Don't Want to be Part of Your Revolution | mooreroom(added 2.26.2011 9:15 am est)
- Questions that Need Answers by David Lee King (added 2.26.2011 9:15 am est)
- Silence = Death by Matt Hamilton (added 2.26.2011 9:15 am est)
- Another Ebook Rant by Christina Pikas (added 2.26.2011 9:15 am est)
- Content middlemen, we need your help! « Things I've Learned
- Library eBook Revolution, Begin by Sarah Houghton-Jan
- A Bridge Too Far by Roy Tennant
- Quote that: | all these birds with teeth: this is not about science.
- The Publisher of Tolkien Has Taken a Business Lesson from Sauron by Andy Woodworth
- HarperCollins & DRM « The Information Activist Librarian by Anthony Molaro
- Let's Play Rent-A-Book! by David Lee King
- HarperCollins Puts 26 Loan Cap on Ebook Circulations by Josh Hadro
- It's Always Something: "Publishing Industry Forces OverDrive and Other Library eBook Vendors to Take a Giant Step Back" (via Librarian by Day)


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Main Page
Welcome to the MusicBrainz Wiki!
The MusicBrainz Wiki is a dynamic and growing information resource to help you understand MusicBrainz, learn how to use and contribute to it more effectively, and to help shape the direction it takes into the future.
Introduction to MusicBrainz
New users can find an introduction to MusicBrainz in this Wiki, as well as an explanation of the Picard Tagger, how to contribute, and MusicBrainz press information.
Frequently Asked Questions
These FAQs are maintained by the MusicBrainz community. Chances are, that if you have a question on how to use MusicBrainz, you will find the answer here.
If you cannot find an answer in the FAQ, search this third-party mailing list archive (hosted by Nabble) which combines messages from MusicBrainz' various mailing lists. You can search, browse, or post new questions using Nabble.
MusicBrainz Guidelines
This wiki contains important guidelines that help determine how data is added to, and modified on, the database.
- The style guidelines have information on how the data in MusicBrainz should be formatted and organized, this includes the official style guidelines, capitalization standards and classical style guidelines.
- The editing guidelines provide information on how editing works and suggestions on the most effective ways to add new data and correct data that has errors or doesn't follow the style guidelines.
The user help mailing list archive also holds many discussions and informal agreements on formatting entries.
Community Projects
The users who take care of the MusicBrainz database have started various small community projects around specialized areas. This helps people to coordinate their editing efforts and to find like minded editors who have knowledge in similar areas.
Feel free to contact or join these groups, or even to found a new one!
MusicBrainz Development
MusicBrainz is actively being developed by its community, and offers a number of different products.
Feel free to check out our server and database, and the license they're provided under.

subset: commoncrawl


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National Office
4930 Del Ray Avenue
Bethesda, MD 20814
This site covers all gastrointestinal conditions, including celiac disease. Using the search option, you'll find the latest research news on this disease.
20350 Ventura Boulevard, Suite 240
Woodland Hills, CA 91364
The CDF provides support, information, and assistance to people affected by celiac disease and dermatitis herpetiformis (CD/DH). The CDF also works closely with healthcare professionals and pharmaceutical and medical industries.
PO Box 31700
Omaha, NE 68131-0700
877-CSA-4-CSA (US toll free)
(402) 558-0600
At this site, you'll find a network of chapters, resource units, and contact persons that represent a local support system for people following the gluten-free diet. You can also read through a series of educational materials covering current information and research on celiac disease.
5025 Orbitor Drive
Mississauga, ON L4W 4Y5
The Canadian Celiac Association is a national organization dedicated to providing services and support to persons with celiac disease and dermatitis herpetiformis through programs of awareness, advocacy, education, and research.
Ultima revisión February 2021 por EBSCO Medical Review Board EBSCO Medical Review Board Last Updated: 03/10/2021


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Last Wednesday, we spoke to radio and TV personality, newspaper columnist Rabbi Yaakov Spivak. We spoke about some interesting insights on Megillahs Esther. If you missed the broadcast you can hear it here.
This evening we will feature a conversation with Aaron Zimmerman, owner of Liquors Galore (1212 Avenue J – between 12th and 13th Streets; Brooklyn, NY 11230-3702; Telephone: 718.338.4166).
Mr. Zimmerman opened his first liquor store in 1998, it was located 2 blocks away from his current location, it was long and very narrow. Three years ago he moved to his present location into what is one of the most beautiful, best organized wine and liquor stores. When you first walk into this well appointed store you can't being impressed by the looks, the knowledgeable stuff and the encyclopedic knowledge of their product by the store owners. Wines, for example, are organized by country of origin and – within each country – by winery. Center isles display sale items as well as some of the newest products.
Aaron has shared some basics of wine tasting on this blog's pages before, with a four part series on Enjoying Your Wine (Buying, Tasting, Storing and Grape Varieties). This evening we will talk about some of the newest kosher wines to enjoy on Purim and Pessach and suggestions on how to enjoy the Arba Kosos at both sedorim without getting sick.
Just listen in, gentle reader, at 8:00pm (Eastern Time) on Wednesday, March 2nd, on Jewish Radio Network. Enter the site and click on the red "here" under the white "Radio," then wait about 30 to 90 seconds for the application to start streaming.


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Our show, tomorrow evening – at 8:00pm (Eastern Time), on BlogTalkRadio.com/kosherscene will feature – as our guest – Judy Gruen (A Conversation with Judy Gruen).
Who is she? Judy Gruen is an award-winning humor columnist, she's published four books, and a self-described unrepentant chocoholic. Her laugh-out-loud funny essays as well as serious features appear regularly on Aish.com, as well as dozens of other media outlets, and her work has been anthologized in more than 10 books.
Her new book, Till We Eat Again: A Second Helping, is a true chronicle of her efforts to lose a measly 15 pounds in time for a college reunion, and is getting rave reviews.
Her humorous writings deal not only with the funny side of losing weight but she also dissects the subtle absurdities encountered in everyday life. You can read some of her columns at Judy Gruen's OFF MY NOODLE, it will definitely prepare you for our conversation.
Meanwhile, in case you missed it, why not tune in to last week's show with cookbook iphone and ipod app author Gloria Kobrin? Gloria not only cooks, and cooks well, she is also very involved in many community activities. You will enjoy listening to our talk.
Don't forget to tune us in tomorrow evening, at 8:00 pm (Eastern Time) for A Conversation with Judy Gruen. We'll be waiting for you!


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Cotton Candy BraceletRegular price $30.00 Save $-30.00
Sweet and flirty, with extra sparkle - the perfect bracelet
- Gold-filled Stardust
- Acqua Jade
- Rose Quartz
- Pink and Misty White Glass
Online Shipping Policy
- Please allow 48-72 hours for order processing
- Orders shipping from Nantucket Island may take longer to arrive as we often experience shipping delays due to inclement weather on the island.
- Orders ship from our Palm Beach and Nantucket location, items may arrive in separate shipments
- We currently only ship products within the continental United States
- All Sale items are Final Sale and can not be returned or exchanged
Estimated Arrival
UPS Flat Rate
3-10 Business Days
Determined at checkout
UPS Flat Rate ( ART ONLY)
3-4 Business Days
|UPS FLAT RATE (Structured Hats ONLY)
|3-4 Business Days
1-2 Business Day
We are happy to process a return or exchange for you!
Something not quite right?
Not a problem. You can make a return within 21 days of purchase.
Discounted items are final sale and as such cannot be returned or exchanged. All else is fair game.
If your item is damaged and your purchase date falls outside our standard return window, then please contact firstname.lastname@example.com.
How much do returns cost?
Exchanges are free! For most returns, just cover the cost of the return label!
How do I start a return?
It's super, super easy. Visit our Return Center to start your return. You'll need the email address associated with your purchase, or order number and shipping zip code — your choice.
Next, you'll receive step-by-step instructions and a shipping label, also sent to your email.
Can I make an exchange?
Yes! For exchanges, simply follow the same steps outlined above and choose your preferred item after selecting the item you'll be sending back.
Do I need to return the product in its original packaging? Not at all. Ship your return back in your preferred packaging. We just ask that it's shipped in a container that protects the merchandise so as to avoid damage in transit :)
Is an order slip required? Nope! We have all the information we need, so long as your returned product still has its original tags intact and you use the shipping label we provide to you.
Where can I find my shipping label?
Once you start your return, you'll receive step-by-step instructions and a return shipping label which we'll also be sent to your email for easy access.
What should I do if I receive the wrong product?
Sorry about that! After starting your return, select 'received wrong item' under 'reason for return', and proceed through the exchange. Your preferred item will ship to you right away!
How long does it take to ship an exchange? Exchanges ship instantly! We ship your exchange as soon as you request it - even before you send back your original item.
What is an instant Credit and how do I use it?
After you move through the steps on our Returns Center, you'll receive a temporary credit equal to the value of the returns you're sending back. You can use this credit to make a new purchase, and it ships right away. If you don't use the credit, your original payment method will be refunded as usual.
How do I return or exchange a gift?
Not your taste? Not to worry. Visit our Returns Center and click the "Returning a gift?" link below the email entry box. Enter the order number and your email (don't worry, your gifter won't be notified) to initiate the return.
Can I make a return or exchange in person?
Yes, you're welcome to return or exchange at any of our retail locations. Find your nearest store here and swing on by!
In Store Return/Exchange Policy
- 3 Days for a Full Refund
- 14 Days for Store Credit or Exchange
- Merchandise must be accompanied with an original receipt
- Merchandise must be unused, unworn, unaltered and in its original packaging, this includes any boxes, bags, liners or other signature packaging materials
- All Sale items are Final Sale and can not be returned or exchanged
- DO NOT ship back any Final Sale items without prior consent. If we receive a Final Sale item in boutique we will keep the product and you will not be refunded.


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Sign In
We love to hear feedback from you. Let us know what you think about how we can improve your shopping experience. We really appreciate it.
Thank you for taking your time and giving us your feedback.
The best way to find the correct Factory Remotes and Keys > Transponder Key > Volkswagen for your vehicle is to start by using the Year Make Model of your vehicle to drill down to possible parts. Then compare the FCC IDs, part numbers, specifications, and button configurations to your existing remote/key. If you don't have an existing remote/key then use the verification procedures or contact us.


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Today in the news: Obama condemns IRS targeting of conservative groups
Quote of note
"This is pretty straightforward. If, in fact, IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported on and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that's outrageous, and there is no place for it." - President Barack Obama, at a joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron. Conservative groups, many affiliated with the Tea Party, claim they were targeted by the IRS during the 2012 election for investigations to see if they were violating tax-exempt status, the Associated Press reports. The Treasury Department's inspector general is expected to release a final report of the yearlong investigation into these claims this week.
News to know
Dr. Kermit Gosnell, a Pittsburgh abortion provider, was found guilty of three charges of first-degree murder and one charge of manslaughter today, according to CNN. The first-degree murder charges mean Gosnell, who is not a board-certified obstetrician or gynecologist, is eligible for the death penalty. Gosnell was accused of performing unliscensed abortions, including killing some infants who were alive and viable during the sixth, seventh and eigth months of pregnancy. The involuntary manslaughter conviction comes from the death of Karnamaya Mongar, who died of an anesthetic overdose during a second-trimester abortion as Gosnell's clinic. Gosnell was also found guilty of 21 counts of abortion of the unborn, 24 weeks and over.
Hot video: Silo demolition fails
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The Fast Lane
Driving fast is not necessarily a good thing. We want to get where we're going as quickly as possible, but we also want to arrive safely. If we drive too fast, we may encounter all sorts of problems. If we drive too slow, we're wasting time and may be causing traffic problems behind us. These competing considerations will both be fulfilled by maintaining an average velocity that is at or close to the posted speed limit. We want to find the "sweet spot," the happy medium that both saves time and helps keep us safe.
The same principles may also be applied when we're exercising. We want to improve, get stronger, and build more endurance as soon as we can, while simultaneously avoiding injury and staying healthy. Very often, these goals may conflict. It's important to ensure that we're exercising efficiently and making certain we're deriving the greatest benefit from our exercise time. These benefits are obtained by a steady approach, one that focuses on incremental gains accomplished over time.1
It's natural to want to arrive at a desired outcome quickly. But as with any other form of training, whether learning to play the piano or becoming a competent chess player, substantial time is required to produce long lasting results. In the case of exercise, trying to hurry the process will usually cause an injury. You'll be set back at least weeks, if not months, and you'll have to start over, pretty much from the beginning.
For almost all of us the "tortoise" approach, rather than that of the "hare" in the well-known fable, will produce the health benefits we're hoping to achieve from our daily exercise. If you've never walked before and want to incorporate this aerobic activity as part of your exercise routine, start with a 10-minute walk. This doesn't sound like much, but that is precisely the point. Start by doing a little and build up gradually and consistently. Within 6 or 8 weeks you'll be doing 30-40 minute brisk walks several times a week, which will represent a very good aerobic exercise program. Incorporating strength training into your routine will employ a similar method. For each of your exercises (such as bench press, one-arm row, squat, toe raise, shoulder press, biceps curl, and lying triceps press), begin with a weight with which you can comfortably do 10 repetitions. If you can't do 10 reps, the weight is too heavy. Start with that weight and do 3 sets per exercise. Build up gradually by increasing the weight by 5%, if possible, each week or every 2 weeks. After 10 to 12 weeks you'll be noticeably stronger and your metabolism will begin to be more efficient.2,3
By progressing slowly and steadily, you will build a solid base and make consistent and possibly substantial gains in your exercise routine. You will get where you want to get safely and effectively. The long-term outcome will be enhanced health, wellness, and well-being.
1Marongiu E, Crisafulli A: Cardioprotection acquired through exercise: the role of ischemic preconditioning. Curr Cardiol Rev 10(4):336-348, 2014
2Huxel Bliven KC, Anderson BE: Core stability training for injury prevention. Sports Health 5(6):514-522, 2013
3Granacher U, et al: The importance of trunk muscle strength for balance, functional performance, and fall prevention in seniors: a systematic review. Sports Med 43(7):627-641, 2013
Many exercise-related injuries are caused, in part, by deficiencies in core muscle strength. Weakness in core performance leads to a lack of biomechanical support for movements such as bending, lifting, pushing, and pulling. You're not aware of such lack of support until, for example, you attempt a dumbbell squat or try to run a little faster in an interval training session. Even a simple exercise such as a lat pulldown or triceps pressdown requires sufficient core stabilization. A strong core is critically important for a successful exercise program.The core muscular system consists of numerous inner layers of sheets of muscle and a vast array of small muscles that help maintain coordinated movement among your spinal bones, pelvic bones, and hip joints. By detecting and correcting spinal misalignments that cause nerve interference, regular chiropractic care helps ensure that your core muscles are receiving the nerve information they need to function properly and help you get the most out of your exercise time.


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Here's a one-sentence summary of each review on this blog. To read the review, use the Search box on the site to search for the author or title.
March 2015
The Fall: A Father's Memoir in 424 Steps. By Diogo Mainardi. Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa. A Venice-based Brazilian writer finds his life transformed by the "cosmic optimism" of a son with cerebral palsy in this memoir in the form of a book-length lyric essay.
July 2009
The Dunderheads. By Paul Fleischman. Illustrated by David Roberts. A comeuppance awaits a cruel, large-bosomed teacher in a picture book for young school-age children that has as a subtext: Some women with big breasts do have small brains.
Our Savage Art: Poetry and the Civil Tongue. By William Logan. The latest collection of poetry criticism by a poet who won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism for The Undiscovered Country. (Briefly mentioned.)
We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals. By Gillian Gill. A good dual biography of England's longest-reigning queen and her prince consort by a scholar who excels as a storyteller if not as a prose stylist.
June 2009
Hons and Rebels. By Jessica Mitford. A memoir of the author's storied family of English aristocrats, which included six gifted daughters and a son killed in World War II. (Briefly mentioned.)
Love in a Cold Climate. By Nancy Mitford. A beautiful English heiress flouts convention by marrying a man who had been her mother's lover in a comic novel and a modern classic, inspired partly by the life of the author's half-batty upper-class family between the world wars.
Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend. By Larry Tye. A new biography of the pitcher Satchel Paige, who became nearly as famous for his epigrammatic wit as for the bullet-speed pitching that endeared him to fans, first in the Negro Leagues and then for the Cleveland Indians and other teams. (Briefly mentioned.)
Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind. By Ann B. Ross. A rich Presbyterian widow in a small town in North Carolina learns that her dead husband has left her a startling legacy — an illegitimate 9-year-old son — in the first of ten novels that are more irreverent than those Jan Karon's "Mitford" series but cut from a similar bolt of pop fiction.
The Pains of April. By Frank Turner Hollon. A 86-year-old retired lawyer looks back on his life from a Gulf Coast rest home, where he has held onto more of his marbles than some of the other residents. (Briefly mentioned.)
The Naked and the Dead. By Norman Mailer. Nowhere near as good as some of the 20th-century war novels often mentioned in the same breath, such as All Quiet on the Western Front and A Farewell to Arms. (Briefly noted.)
House Lust: America's Obsession With Our Homes. By Daniel McGinn. A Newsweek correspondent's lively exploration of why — even in the Great Recession — Americans covet ever-larger homes full of luxuries like mud rooms, brushed-nickel toilet-paper holders, or countertops made from Giallo Ornamental Granite imported from Brazil.
How to Be a Mobilian: A Guide for Old Salts and Newcomers. By David C. Barnette. A gifted Alabama humorist tweaks the unwritten social codes of the Mobile upper crust in a book that describes, among other things, the four seasons of the city's men: "football, hunting, Mardi Gras and fishing."
A Summons to Memphis. By Peter Taylor. One of the great American writers of the late 20th century shows how a move from Nashville to Memphis has reverberated over time — all but destroyed a family that was once a model of Southern gentility — in a novel that deservedly won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. By Flannery O' connor Selected and edited by Sally and Robert Fitzgerald. Better known for her novels and short stories, O'Connor proves that she was equally good at nonfiction in this wonderful collection of essays on life, literature, and peacocks, birds that captivated her.
North Toward Home. By Willie Morris. One of the great modern memoirs of a Southern boyhood, written by the late celebrated editor of Harper's.
The Ponder Heart. By Eudora Welty. A comic novella about a rich and kind-hearted uncle put on trial for a murder he didn't commit, full of examples of Welty's wonderful ear for the dialect of many Southern groups.
May 2009
Tales of the Ten Lost Tribes. By Tamar Yellin. An award-winning English writer's superb collection of 10 linked short stories about geographically or otherwise displaced characters, inspired by accounts of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.
Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books. By Maureen Corrigan. A critic for NPR's Fresh Air serves up a memoir in the form of an essay collection on the pleasures of reading. (Briefly mentioned.)
Death Takes a Holiday: A Comedy in Three Acts. By Alberto Casella. To find out why people fear him, death disguises himself as a prince suspends all activity for three days in a supernatural comedy that asks: Is love stronger than death?
April 2009
Try to Tell the Story: A Memoir. By David Thomson. A film critic remembers growing up in postwar London with a father who left home but pretended he hadn't.
Walt Disney's Cinderella: A Little Golden Books Classic. Story adapted by Jane Werner. Illustrated by Retta Scott Worcester. Surprise! The tie-in edition for the 1950 Disney animated film has a few strengths that other versions of the fairy tale don't.
What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. By Thomas Frank. A bracing and often witty 2004 bestseller that makes a fine guide to the political roots of the current economic mess.
Not Becoming My Mother: And Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way. By Ruth Reichl. The editor-in-chief of Gourmet remembers her difficult mother, who may or may not or may not have been correctly diagnosed as manic depressive, in an elegant but overpriced memoir.
What a Great Kid! Coupon Book: 52 Ways to Tell Kids "You're Loved" A 120-page Hallmark Gift Book, full of tear-out coupons that say things like, "Not today! Pick your least favorite chore and SKIP doing it today!"
March 2009
My Little Red Book. By Rachel Kauder-Nalebuff. Women and girls remember their first periods in a poorly edited (and at times misleading) collection of true stories in which the best entries — Gloria Steinem's trailblazing essay, "If Men Could Menstruate" and Jill Bialosky's poem, "The Wrath of the Gods, 1970" — depart from the oral-history form used elsewhere.
Baby Farm Animals. By Garth Williams. Ages 3 and under. Amazing value in an age of overpriced children's books: a Little Golden Books Classic that costs $2.99 in hardcover and has and words and pictures by the illustrator of Charlotte's Web and Little House on the Prairie.
February 2009
Middlemarch. By George Eliot. The first great multiplot novel in English tells the wonderful story of a young woman who longs to be useful as it develops the theme that "that there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it."
Now All We Need Is a Title: Famous Book Titles and How They Got That Way. By André Bernard. An engaging collection of anecdotes and commentary about how books got their titles (including the amusing story of how John Steinbeck's widow found The Grapes of Wrath sold in Japan as Angry Raisins).
January 2009
The Little Yellow Leaf. By Carin Berger. Ages 2 and up. An oak leaf doesn't want to leave the tree when autumn comes in a lovely parable about how the support of a friend can help you perform a necessary task.
The Host. By Stephenie Meyer. A woman wages a host-versus-graft struggle with a new soul, inserted in her body by aliens, in a creepily Freudian tale written at a fourth-grade reading level.
Valentine's Day: Holidays, Festivals, & Celebrations. Ages 4 and up. By Ann Heinrich. Illustrated by Sharon Holm. A picture book about how children can celebrate Feb. 14 that includes more than a dozen short poems about the day. (Briefly mentioned.)
December 2008
WordPress for Dummies: First Edition. By Lisa Sabin-Wilson. This guide based on WordPress 2.3 (to be replaced in early 2009 by a second edition for 2.7) focuses on WordPress.org and WordPress MUblogs and gives short shrift to the WordPress.com blogs that may attract most of the "dummies."
The Reader. By Bernhard Schlink. An overrated novel about the consequences of a love affair between a teenager in postwar Germany and a former S.S. guard, built on a premise that New Yorker's Anthony Lane rightly described as "morally famished." (Briefly mentioned.)
I Saw You in the Bathtub: And Other Folk Rhymes (An I Can Read Book 1) By Alvin Schwartz. Illustrated by Syd Hoff. Ages 2 and up. A wonderfully entertaining early reader fun of classics like "I scream, / You scream, / We all scream / For ice cream."
November 2008
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. By Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. A sunny epistolary novel about single female journalist in London who learns of an offbeat book club on Guernsey, recently occupied by Nazis, and finds that a visit to the island transforms her life. [Reading group guide posted the same day and saved in the Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guides category.]
The Necklace: Thirteen Women and the Experiment That Transformed Their Lives. By the Women of Jewelia and Cheryl Jarvis. Tuesdays with more jewelry. [Reading group guide posted the same day and saved in the Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guides category.]
Chapman's Car Compendium: The Essential Book of Car Facts and Trivia. By Giles Chapman. An entertaining collection of facts about many kinds of cars that brims with anecdotes and lists with inspired titles like "Dictators' cars" ("Rafael Trujillo – Chrysler Crown Imperial").
October 2008
The Man in the Picture: A Ghost Story. By Susan Hill. New faces mysteriously appear in a painting of masked revelers in Venice, bought at auction by a Cambridge don, in this well-crafted neo-Victorian ghost story by the author of The Woman in Black.
All the Poems of Muriel Spark. By Muriel Spark. Yes, the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie also wrote poems, gathered in a collection notable partly for "The Goose," which puts a wry spin on the tale of the goose that laid a golden egg. (Briefly mentioned)
Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause. By Tom Gjelten. A well-written history of the Bacardi rum family, intertwined with that of Cuba, from its founding in 1862 through Fidel Castro's resignation and his brother Raúl's succession in February 2008. (Books I Didn't Finish)
Sing a Song of Popcorn: Every Child's Book of Poems. Illustrated by nine Caldecott Medal artists. Selected by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers, Eva Moore, Mary Michaels White and Jan Carr. Ages 2 and up. A handsomely illustrated collection of modern and classic poems divided into categories such as "Spooky Poems," "Story Poems" and poems about animals, people and the weather. (Briefly mentioned.)
Orange You Glad It's Halloween, Amber Brown? An "A" Is for Amber Book. By Paula Danziger. Illustrated by Tony Ross. Ages 4-8. The pun-loving Amber Brown gets ready for trick-or-treating and a school Halloween party in an early reader spun off from Danziger's popular series for older children.
Grandmas Trick-or-Treat. By Emily Arnold McCully. Ages 4-8. Two grandmothers — one of whom wears a nearly indecent miniskirt — defy stereotypes when they thwart a bully's efforts to spoil the Halloweeen fun in a book for children who are beginning to read on their own.
September 2008
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective. By Kate Summerscale. A true-crime story structured like a mystery novel, complete with a startling twist at the end, about a Scotland Yard detective's investigation the 1860 murder of 3-year-old boy whose body turned up in the servants' privy of an English country house.
The Seamstress. By Frances de Pontes Peebles. A historical novel that reads at times like a South American Bonnie and Clyde as it tells the stories of two orphaned sisters whose lives diverge and converge in dangerous ways during their early adulthood Brazil in the 1930s. (Books I Didn't Finish)
August 2008
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. By David Wroblewski. Ophelia is a dog named Almondine in this Hamlet-influenced yarn, told partly from a canine point of view, about a 14-year-old mute Wisconsin boy who goes on the run after back-to-back tragedies occur on his family's farm.
Read All About It! By Laura Bush and Jenna Bush. Illustrated by Denise Brunkus. Ages 4 and up. The first lady and her daughter campaign for reading in misguided picture book that tells children that stories are good instead of telling them a good story.
The Portable Dorothy Parker: Revised and Enlarged Edition. By Dorothy Parker. Introduction by Brendan Gill. An excellent introduction to the work the celebrated wit and critic for the New Yorker that has poems, reviews and short stories (including "Big Blonde," "A Telephone Call" and "The Lovely Leave"). (Briefly mentioned.)
Lyle, Lyle Crocodile. By Bernard Waber. Ages 3 and up. Another celebration of the joys of urban life — especially those of New York City — as experienced by the almost pathologically optimistic crocodile who made his debut in The House on East 88th Street and lives in the bathtub of the Primm family brownstone.
June 2008
The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL. By Mark Bowden. The author of Black Hawk Down recalls the first National Football League championship game decided by sudden-death overtime. (Briefly mentioned.)
Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives. By Jim Sheeler. Journalism at its finest, inspired by a Pulitzer Prize-winning series for the Rocky Mountain News, about a Marine Corps "casualty assistance calls officer" — whose job includes telling people that relatives have died in Iraq — and the families he met through his work.
365 Outdoor Activities You Can Do With Your Child. By Steve and Ruth Bennett. A year's worth of easy, no- or low cost, television-free activities you can do with a child over the age of 3, from the authors of the equally good and more widely available 365 TV-Free Activities You Can Do With Your Child.
September 2007
Horton Hatches the Egg (Classic Picture Books Every Child Should Read #5). By. Dr. Seuss. Ages 2 and up. A classic fable about every child's struggle to be good, which includes the famous lines: "I meant what I said /And I said what I meant …. /An elephant's faithful/ One hundred per cent!"
May 2008
Wolf Totem. By Jiang Rong. Translated by Howard Rosenblatt. A retired Beijing scholar's didactic and slow-moving semi-autobiographical novel about life among sheep-herding nomads of Outer Mongolia during the era of the Red Guards.
A classic fable about every child's struggle to be good, which includes the famous lines: "I meant what I said /And I said what I meant …. /An elephant's faithful/ One hundred per cent!"
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. By Muriel Spark. A brilliant, short novel and psychological exploration of female power as wielded by a teacher in an Edinburgh girls' school in the 1930s.
Murder in Mesopotamia: A Hercule Poirot Mystery. By Agatha Christie. The Belgian detective seeks the killer of an archaeologist's wife, murdered on a dig at an Assyrian palace in Iraq, in what may be Christie's most autobiographical novel.
Mister Pip. By Lloyd Jones. A black female university graduate remembers hearing a white man read Great Expectations on a Pacific island when she was 13 in a disappointing 2007 Man Booker Prize finalist written at a third-grade level, according to Flesch-Kincaid readability statistics.
The Summer of the Pike. By Jutta Richter. Illustrated by Quint Buchholz. Ages 9 and up. One of Germany's best children's authors makes her American debut in a brief, sensitive novel about three friends whose parents serve as caretakers of castle, where they try to cope when one mother's cancer worsens.
Water for Elephants. By Sara Gruen. A historical novel that gallops along with a Depression-era traveling circus, saddled with cliches. Reading group guide also posted and saved in the Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guides category.
How to Be Good. By Nick Hornby. The author of Fever Pitch asks a serious question — what does it mean to be a "good" person in a materialistic age? — in a comic novel about an English marriage that is tested when the husband falls under the influence of a spiritual guru.
Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith. By Barbara Brown Taylor. An Episcopal priest tells why she left the parish ministry in this a rare portrait of the everyday challenges the clergy (which in which case included a call from a woman who said: "Martha is sitting on the toilet and we are out of toilet paper. If I came over right now, could you write me a check to the grocery store so she can get up?").
Love You, Mean It. A True Story of Love, Loss, and Friendship. By Patricia Carrington, Julia Collins, Claudia Gerbasi, and Ann Haynes with Eve Charles. Sept. 11 anniversary re-post of an earlier review of a memoir by four 9/11 widows, who talk about the coping in the aftermath of tragedy.
Everyday Life. By Lydie Salvayre. Translated from the French by Jane Kuntz. A secretary at a Paris advertising agency is undone by the arrival of a new co-worker in an idiosyncratic French novel that is a study in alienation and mental disintegration written with a Cartesian spareness.
The Z Was Zapped. By Chris Van Allsburg. Ages 2 and up. An A-plus alphabet book by one of the greatest living author-illustrators, who also wrote Jumanji and The Polar Express.
Daddy-Long-Legs. By Jean Webster. A charming classic novel told in letters from a high-spirited and keenly intelligent student at women's college to her male patron, which was a bestseller in its day and made into a movie with Leslie Caron.
August 2007
[June-August 2007 listings are incomplete and will be updated soon.]
Where the Wild Things Are (Classic Picture Books Every Child Should Read #4). By Maurice Sendak. Ages 2-8. A landmark picture book that won the Caldecott Medal for its trailblazing portrayal of the inner life of a boy who tames his frustrations by taking an imaginary journey to a realm "where the wild things are."
On Chesil Beach. By Ian McEwan. On Chesil Beach. By Ian McEwan. An overrated flyweight novel about a young couple's disastrous 1962 wedding night that is a finalist for the 2007 Man Booker Prize but may remind you more of Mitch Albom than Kazuo Ishiguro or Anita Brookner.
Fowl Weather (Books I Didn't Finish). By Bob Tarte. A Michigan writer's memoir of life with 39 birds, ducks, geese, rabbits, cats, rabbits and other creatures, which didn't live up to its billing as a book with a "Dave Barry on a farm" sensibility.
The Scorpion's Sweet Venom: The Diary of a Brazilian Call Girl. By Bruna Surfistinha/Raquel Pacheco. Interviewed by Jorge Tarquini. Translated by Alison Entrekin. Raquel Pacheco writes about as well as Henry James would have run a brothel in this memoir of her experiences as teenage prostitute who became notorious for blogging about her clients.
Looking for Class: Days and Nights at Oxford and Cambridge. By Bruce Feiler. The host of the popular PBS series Walking the Bible remembers his jolly good time in graduate school at Cambridge University in the 1990s (which, despite his title, gets far more space than Oxford). (Briefly noted.)
Here's the Bright Side: Of Failure, Fear, Cancer, Divorce, and Other Bum Raps. By Betty Rollin. Illustrations by Jules Feiffer. A bowl of saccharine mush from a former NBC correspondent who argues that "within each form of misery" there is "a hidden prize waiting to be found" but draws so few distinctions between, say, the pain of someone rejected by Harvard and a fourth-degree burn victim that it would be cruel to give this book to some people in physical or emotional pain.
How to Become Ridiculously Well-Read in One Evening: A Collection of Literary Encapsulations. Compiled and Edited by E.O. Parrott. Classic works of lit / Reduced quite a bit / In poems and prose / As fun overflows.
Four Days to Glory: Wrestling With the Soul of the American Heartland. By Mark Kreidler. One of the year's best sports books brings unexpected drama and poignancy to the race for an Iowa state high school wrestling championship and its emotional impact on two favored competitors and their families, coaches, teammates and fans.
July 2007
The Birthday Book: Their Delights, Disappointments, Past and Present, Worldly, Astrological and Infamous. By Linda Rannells Lewis. A graceful meditation on how people (including well-known authors) have seen birthdays from pagan times to the disco era).
Pearl Harbor: A Novel of December 8th. By Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen. Gingrich writes fiction as well as Danielle Steel could draft legislation.
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (Classic Picture Books Every Child Should Read #3). By Virginia Lee Burton. Ages 2-6. An old red steam shovel pushes herself to the limit to prove she can still be useful in a classic that is both an exciting adventure story and a moving parable about growing old in America.
The Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deception. By Emmanuel Carrère. A Frenchman cracks under the pressure of leading a double life — and murders his wife, children and parents — in one of the best true crime books of the decade.
Did I Wake You? Haikus for Modern Living. By Beth Lapides. Seventeen-syllable poems about Iraq, Google, and tantric sex, not to mention Charlie Rose, Salma Hayek and other topics undreamed-of by Lady Murasaki. (Briefly mentioned.)
The Dangerous Book for Boys. By Conn and Hal Iggulden. Ages 9 and up (younger for reading aloud). A cross between the Boy Scout Handbook and Guinness World Records, which includes instructions on how to tan a rabbit hide and make a water bomb out of newspaper. (Briefly mentioned.)
June 2007
How to Be. By Lisa Brown. Ages 2–4. A witty picture book shows young children how to imitate a bear, monkey, turtle, snake, spider, and dog
When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa. By Peter Godwin. A superb memoir of the collapse of Zimbabwe under dictator Robert Mugabe that, like Philip Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, ranks among the finest recent portraits of the ruin of an African nation.
A Season in Dornoch: Golf and Life in the Scottish Highlands. By Lorne Rubenstein. Foreword by Sean Connery. Possibly the best memoir in print of a golf course you've never played on.
No! I Don't Want to Join a Book Club: Diary of a 60th Year. By Virginia Ironside. A British agony aunt's semi-autobiographical novel in diary form, built on the contrarian theme that the great thing about getting old is that there are so many things you can't do any more. [Reading group guide archived under Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guides.]
Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science. By Atul Gawande. A collection of intelligent and often provocative essays on medicine by a sugeon and writer for The New Yorker, who deals with topics that include doctors' mistakes and whether emergency room visits increase when there's a full moon.
Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat: Secrets of My Mother's Tokyo Kitchen. By Naomi Moriyama and William Doyle. Why do Japanese women have the lowest obesity rate and longest life expectancy in the world? By way of answer, Moriyama offers a philosophy of eating and recipes inspired by her mother's home cooking. [Books I Didn't Finish.]
May 2007
The Daily Telegraph Second Book of Obituaries: Heroes and Adventurers. Edited by Hugh Massingberd. A collection of spirited and often witty obituaries, many of them for military leaders, from the English newspaper.
Princess Smartypants. By Babette Cole. Ages 4-8. A witty, revisionist fairy tale about a motorcycle-riding princess who refuses to marry her repulsive suitors.
The Accidental Bride: A Romantic Comedy. By Janice Harayda. Reading group guide only archived under Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guides. Reviews on the "My Books" page at www.janiceharayda.com.
Ace of Spades: A Memoir. By David Matthews. Raised by his black father after his white mother abandoned the family, Matthews writes of his late 20th-century childhood in the often jarring tone of a 19th-century bildungsroman.
The Inheritance of Loss. By Kiran Desai. A novel about a cynical Indian judge and his orphaned granddaughter in a Himalayan village shaken by violence during the Nepalese insurgency of the 1980s. [Books I Didn't Finish.]
Everett Anderson's Goodbye. By Lucille Clifton. Ages 4-8. In this winner of the Coretta Scott King Award from the American Library Association, young Everett struggles to accept his father's death and realizes that " … whatever happens when people die, / love doesn't stop, and / neither will I."
Fat, Forty, and Fired: One Man's Frank, Funny and Inspiring Account of Leaving His Job and Finding His Life. By Nigel Marsh. After losing his job, a leading Australian advertising executive took time off to reconnect with his family, lose weight, conquer his alcoholism and, apparently, write this breezy memoir. [Reading group guide archived under Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guides.]
Michael Rosen's Sad Book. Words by Michael Rosen. Pictures by Quentin Blake. Ages 7-9. Rosen writes with great feeling about the loss of his son, but Blake's brilliant illustrations steal show in this deeply moving Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor book. One of the finest picture books about death, though not for the very young or even for all children in its suggested age range.
The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic – and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World. By Steven Johnson. A well-written history of how two courageous men helped to identify the cause of a devastating cholera outbreak in 19th-century London.
Acceptance: A Novel. By Susan Coll. A deft but digressive and slackly plotted send-up of the college admissions frenzy in a well-off Washington, D.C., suburb. [Reading group guide archived under Totally Unathorized Reading Group Guides.]
Good Sports: Rhymes About Running, Jumping, Throwing, and More. By Jack Prelutsky. Illustrations by Chris Raschka. Varied ages. Seventeen brief, lackluster poems by the Children's Poet Laureate of the U.S., who doesn't seem to know who his audience is for the book.
Tourist Season: Stories. By Enid Shomer. Short stories about women — mostly current or former residents of Florida — by an award-winning writer who has a sense of place but lacks a distinctive voice.
The Cremation of Sam McGee. By Robert Service. The classic ballad of the Klondike gold rush can still thrill children (and their parents) with lines like: "There are strange things done in the midnight sun / By the men who moil for gold …"
April 2007
The Invention of Hugo Cabret: A Novel in Words and Pictures. Ages 9-12. By Brian Selznick. An acclaimed author gets an A+ for packaging and a C for writing for this bestselling children's novel about a young male orphan and thief who lives in a Paris train station and tries to fix a broken wind-up man that may contain a message from his father. [Reading group guide archived under Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guides.]
The Stories of John Cheever. By John Cheever. One of the best short story collections in American literature, written by a great moralist who won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for it.
Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It. By Geoff Dyer. An award-winning travel writer's semi-fictionalized portraits of places that include Thailand, Amsterdam and pre-Katrina New Orleans.
Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live With Unresolved Grief. By Pauline Boss. A therapist's views on living with loss when someone you love is "psychologically absent but physically present" (because of Alzheimer's Disease or other factors) or is "psychologically present but physically absent" (because of geographical distance or other factors that may never be overcome).
Thank You Bear. By Greg Foley. Ages 1-3. A good but oversized and overpriced book for toddlers makes the point that a friend shares your values.
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. By Eric Hodgins. A classic comic novel about the lust for property that's ideal for many book groups. [Reading group guide archived under "Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guides."]
Great Tales From English History (Book 3): Captain Cook, Samuel Johnson, Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin, Edward the Abdicator, and More. By Robert Lacey. True stories of people who defined Britain to itself and the world, brief and engagingly written.
Breaking Apart: A Memoir of Divorce. By Wendy Swallow. Possibly the best memoir of divorce of the decade, written by a former Washington Post reporter and mother of two sons.
The Triumph of Love Over Experience: A Memoir of Remarriage. By Wendy Swallow. A premature sequel to Breaking Apart that isn't nearly as well written or thought out.
About What Was Lost: Miscarriage, Healing, and Hope. Edited by Jessica Berger Gross. Women (and a token male) talk about what it's like to lose a child betwen the sixth and 23rd weeks of pregnancy.
A Tale for Easter. By Tasha Tudor. Ages 4–8. A girl dreams of a magical journey in a picture book that's been a holiday favorite for half a century.
Common Life: Poems. By Robert Cording. Fine poems for Easter and other seasons, including the author's "Advent Stanzas" and "Lenten Stanzas."
Living Things: Collected Poems. By Anne Porter. The second book by a poet who began publishing her work in her 80s includes both new poems and all of those in An Altogether Different Language, a National Book Award finalist.
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia. By Elizabeth Gilbert. An overrated memoir by a GQ writer whose humor tends to be self-consciously cute and whose book makes "recovery" from divorce sound like an expensive form of consumerism.
Infidel. By Ayaan Hirsi Ali. A Somali-born ex-member of the Dutch Parliament writes about her circumcision at the age of five and other events with real passion, but undercuts her credibility by admitting that she lied to government officials to gain refugee status for herself and, later, her sister in Holland. [Reading group guide archived under "Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guides."]
March 2007
King of Another Country. By Fiona French. Ages 4-8. A folk tale-like picture book of the first rank about a selfish young man who learns to compromise after leaving his African village, illustrated in kente-cloth colors and patterns by an artist who has won the Kate Greenaway award.
Living Things: Collected Poems. By Anne Porter. Foreword by David Shapiro. One of our finest Catholic poets and a National Book Award finalist returns with a collection of hymns, prayers, meditations on saints and Scripture and other poems in the spirit of Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Miriam's Cup. By Fran Maushkin. Illustrated by Bob Dacey. Ages 4 and up. A feminist picture-book version of the Passover story that focuses on Moses's sister.
Wonders and Miracles: A Passover Companion Written and compiled Eric A. Kimmel. Ages 4-12. A handsome collection of stories, poems, prayers, recipes and more that won a National Jewish Book Award and may be the best-all around Passover book for children of varied ages.
Easter. By Fiona French. Ages 4 and up. An award-winning illustrator tells the Easter story using the King James Version of the Bible and vibrant art inspired by the stained-glass windows in English cathedrals.
Easter: The King James Version — With Pictures. By Jan Pienkowski. Ages 4 and up. An out-of-print picture book, well worth tracking down for its King James text and haunting black silhouettes that have a drama appropriate to the story without being gory.
Inside My Heart: Choosing to Live With Passion and Purpose. By Robin McGraw. Dr. Phil's wife offers advice to women a memoir that, for a book from a Christian publisher, is oddly short on spirituality and long on descriptions of such things as her $50,000 Mercedes, her Italian crystal chandeliers and her husband's vasectomy reversal.
The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived: How Characters of Fiction, Myth, Legends, Television, and Movies Have Shaped Our Culture, Changed Our Behavior, and Set the Course of History. By Allan Lazar, Dan Karlan and Jeremy Salter. The Marlboro Man is No. 1 on a list that also includes Pandora, Hamlet, Mickey Mouse, King Kong and Barbie.
Stuart: A Life Backwards. By Alexander Masters. A charming, tragicomic memoir about the author's friendship with "an ex-homeless, ex-junkie psychopath" that has won or been short-listed for several major awards and was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle prize. [Reading group guide also available, archived under "Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guides."]
The Second Child: Poems. By Deborah Garrison. Rhymed and unrhymed poems about the intersection of work and motherhood, some in classic forms such as the sonnet and sestina and one ("Goodbye, New York") with the anapestic bounce of a Cole Porter-ish Broadway show tune. [Reading group guide also available, archived under "Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guides."]
Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. By Flannery O'Connor. Selected and edited by Sally and Robert Fitzgerald. One of the great books on writing of the 2oth century, including the essays "Writing Short Stories," "The Nature and Aim of Fiction" and "Catholic Novelists and Their Readers." [Not yet reviewed — Quotes of the Day Nos. 13 and 14.]
Born Twice. By Guiseppe Pontiggia. One of the best novels of the decade about fatherhood and the everyday cruelties inflicted on children with disabilities — in this case, a boy who suffered brain damage during a breech birth — this book deservedly won Italy's highest literary award, the Strega Prize. [Reading group guide also available, archived under "Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guides."]
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Solider. By Ishmael Beah. A former child solider in the civil war in Sierra Leone tells a story that, if gripping, raises questions about the accuracy of some of his memories. (Reding group guide also acailable, archived in the "Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guides" category.)
A Season of Rebirth: Daily Meditations for Lent. By Marc Foley. An unusually literate and intelligent book of reflections for the season, including many well-taken references to the work of writers such as Dante, Shakespeared, and Woody Allen.
February 2007
So Sleepy Story. By Uri Shulevitz. Ages 2 and up. A Caldecott Medalist pays homage to the artist for whom that honor was named, Randolph Caldecott, in a bedtime story for the Goodnight Moon set that makes brilliant use the principle of the contagion of yawns.
The Higher Power of Lucky. By Susan Patron. Ages 9-11. Newbery Medal-winner about a 10-year-old girl who learns the meaning of the word "family" and, more controversially, "scrotum."
The Big Love. By Sarah Dunn. A charming novel about a young Philadelphia columnist and sexual late bloomer that takes an unusually witty and intelligent look at the life of a modern single woman. No relation to the HBO series.
Queens: Portraits of Black Women and Their Fabulous Hair. By Michael Cunningham and George Alexander. Fifty-three African-American talk about what their hair means to them in a an elegant collection of black-and-white photographs that could make a great Valentine's Day gift.
Love Smart: Find the One You Want — Fix the One You Got. By Dr. Phil McGraw. Patronizing mush from the psychologist and talk-show-host.
Mr. Wrong: Real-Life Stories About the Men We Used to Love. Edited by Harriet Brown. Twenty-four female authors and a token gay man write about their former dates, lovers, or husbands, with the best essays comning from Jane Smiley, Caroline Leavitt, Joyce Maynard, and Roxana Robinson.
Skylight Confessions: A Novel. By Alice Hoffman. Brooke Allen got it right when she wroite in the Wall Street Journal that this dark Cinderella story has "enough intellectual trappings to flatter readers into thinking that they are getting some mental nourishment" but is in essence is a "pure romance novel and nothing more."
The Book Club Companion: A Comprensive Guide to the Reading Group Experience. By Diana Loevy. The guacamole also rises in this loopy book of recipes, decorating and fashion ideas, and descriptions of books that might have come from their authors' mothers, including many plugs for books from the Penguin Group, publisher of The Book Club Companion.
The Birthday Party: A Memoir of Survival. By Stanley N. Alpert. A former federal prosectuor provides manna for true crime fans in this story of his abduction by thugs who showed a gang-that-couldn't-shoot-straight ineptitude. (This site contains both a review and a reading-group guide The Birthday Party, archived separately with the Feburary 2007 posts.)
Five Little Fiends. By Sarah Dyer. Ages 4-8. A prize-winning British picture book about the interdependence of the natural world, ideal for preschoolers who love the "wild things" in Where the Wild Things Are.
Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters. By Joan Ryan. A powerful expose of the abuses suffered by many of the country's best female athletes, including some well-known names.
January 2007
A Life in Smoke: A Memoir. By Julia Hansen. Books I Didn't Finish, # 4. You have to want to quit smoking really badly to chain yourself to a radiator as this author did or to get through this book about her experiences.
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. By Kate DiCamillo. Ages 7 and up. A china rabbit becomes an allegory of Christian faith and resurrection in a novel by a writer who won a Newbery Medal for The Tale of Despereaux.
Firstlight: The Early Inspirational Writings of Sue Monk Kidd. By Sue Monk Kidd. Chicken soup for the soul of fans of The Secret Life of Bees.
Hannibal Rising. By Thomas Harris. A prequel to The Silence of the Lambs and other Hannibal Lecter novels that cannibalizes the English language and more.
Flotsam. By David Wiesner. An eloquent, wordless picture book about a boy whose discovery of an underwater camera at the beach takes him on a magical visual journey. (2007 Caldecott Medalist)
Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies: A Guide to Language for Fun and Spite. By June Casagrande. Long on spite, short on fun, and much inferior to Patricia T. O'Conner's Woe Is I, the best grammar book for students and others.
Thirteen Moons: A Novel. By Charles Frazier. The author of Cold Mountain serves up a dish of lard-fried cornmeal mush.
This Is the Rain. By Lola M. Schaefer and Jane Wattenberg. Ages 4 and up. A nonfiction picture book thay uses rhymes and collages to help children learn the answers to such questions as, "How does the water get in the ocean?"
5000 Episodes and No Commercials: The Ultimate Guide to TV Shows on DVD 2007. By David Hofstede. Brief, intelligent reviews of most of the recent and classic TV shows that are available on DVD, listed alphabeticall from The A-Team to Xena: Warrior Princess.
Managing Employees From Hell: Handling Idiots, Whiners, Slackers and Other Workplace Demons. By Gini Graham Scott. A much more useful guide to managing saboteurs at work than the insipid The Power of Nice.
The Confession. By James McGreevey. The author had an unimpressive record as governor of New Jersey, but the sex scenes in his memoir suggest that he may have a future as the gay male Danielle Steel.
Millions of Cats. By Wanda Gág. One of the great classic picture books for preschoolers, deservedly praised by artists including Maurice Sendak and Jan Brett.
The Interruption of Everything. By Terry McMillan. A soap-operish plot about a perimenopausal woman who learns that her husband is having an affair.
The Handmaid and the Carpenter. By Elizabeth Berg. An "Oprah" author writes at a fourth-grade level in a novel that a critic for the Wall Street Journal rightly called "truly mind-numbing goop."
George Eliot: A Life. By Gordon Haight. A landmark biography of a novelist whose greatness derived, like Jane Austen's, from a true greatness of spirit.
December 2006
Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English. By Patricia T. O'Conner. A fresh and funny guide that's the ideal grammar book for students (and parents who've forgotten all they knew in the eighth grade).
Your Management Sucks: Why You Have to Declare War on Yourself … and Your Business. By Mark Stevens. No, the book does.
Soul Sanctuary: Images of the African-American Worship Experience. By Jason Miccolo Johnson. Foreword by Gordon Parks. A book of 165 black-and-white photos and a text by Biblical scholars and others who provide an excellent introduction for all races to African-American worship styles.
A House Somewhere: Tales of Life Abroad. Edited by Don George and Anthony Sattin. Twenty-six original essays or excerpts from books about making a home far from home, including pieces by Isabel Allende Frances Mayes, Peter Mayle, Tim Parks, Paul Theroux, Simon Winchester, and others.
I Don't Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother. By Allison Pearson. Still the best recent send-up of sexual double standards at work, including sham diversity initiatives that are designed more to protect firms from lawsuits than to help women and minorities succeed.
The Niagara River. By Kay Ryan. Poems that, like life, rhyme inexpected places.
Mind Your Manners! By Diane Goode. A light-hearted guide to teaching manners to preschoolers, inspired by an 18th-century etiquette primer.
Bad Heir Day. By Wendy Holden. A book you might call "a cross between Bridget Jones and The Nanny Diaries" — if that weren't exactly the kind of phrase its author loves to lampoon.
The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children. By Wendy Mogel. A wise and compassionate guide to bringing up children who have good character, not just a good personality or high "self-esteem."
Hidden Child. By Isaac Millman. Ages 7-9. A Jewish boy goes into hiding in France after his parents are arrested by the Nazis in a memoir that offers a sensitive introduction to the Holocaust for children of any faith.
The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World With Kindness. By Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval. The people who gave us the Aflac duck play fast-and-lose with facts in a phoned-in book about how being nice — or so they say — helped them succeed.
Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog: Gift Edition. By John Grogan. A bestselling memoir about a lovable but incorrigible retriever returns in a handsome gift edition with color photos of Marley and a copy of his obedience school "report card."
The Coldest Winter: A Stringer in Liberated Europe. By Paula Fox. A slender, elegant, and entirely believable memoir that makes a fine antidote to the aftertaste of books like James Frey's A Million Little Pieces.
Find Anthony Ant. By Lorna and Graham Philpot. Ages 2-5. An engaging seek-and-find book about a brown ant named Anthony that has some elements similar to those of the "Where's Waldo" series but without the violence.
Where's Waldo? The Great Picture Hunt. With 50 stickers. By Martin Handford. Ages 6 and up. The latest entry in perhaps the most violent picture-book series for its age group.
The Nativity. By Julie Vivas. Ages 4-8. And the critic said, "Fear not, for this is tbe best version of the Christmas story for children, and ittakes its text from the King James Bible."
The Perfect Wedding Dress. By Philip Delamore. More than 300 pictures of beautiful bridal gowns (and some suits), worn by women from Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn to those who just hope to feel like them on their wedding day.
A Passion for Parties. By Carolyne Roehm. A coffee-table book with ideas for celebrations ranging from a Hunt Ball to a Fourth of July barbecue, including bizarre pictures of a Halloween party for the Dr. Seuss set that was inspired by Miss Havisham, the cruel and embittered spinster of Dickens's Great Expectations.
Late Wife: Poems. By Claudia Emerson. Yes, the Pulitzer judges gave the 1937 fiction award to Gone With the Wind instead of Absalom, Absalom, but you might be more inclined to forgive them after reading this winner 2006 Pulitzer for Poetry, a haunting collection of poems (nearly a third of them sonnets) about divorce and remarriage.
Max's Words. By Kate Banks and Boris Kulikov. Ages 4-6. This wonderful picture book about a boy who collects words is one of the year's best holiday gifts for preschoolers (are you listening, grandparents?).
Manhunt: The Twelve-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer. By James L. Swanson. A taut tale about the effort by the government and others to capture the man who killed Abraham Lincoln.
November 2006
The Boomers' Guide to Online Dating: Date With Dignity. By Judsen Culbreth. A lively self-help manual for female baby boomers by a former editor-in-chief of Working Mother who, at 52, married a man she met online.
Lombardi and Me: Players, Coaches and Colleagues Talk About the Man and the Myth. By Paul Hornung with Billy Reed. Reminiscences of the legendary coach by players and others, including Bart Starr, Sam Huff, Jerry Kramer, Willie Davis, and Sonny Jurgensen.
Jane Austen's Guide to Good Manners: Compliments, Charades & Horrible Blunders. By Josephine Ross and illustrated by Henrietta Webb. A charmingly illustrated explanation of the Regency etiquette rules followed by Elizabeth Bennet, Emma Woodhouse, the Dashwoods, and other characters.
Five Little Ducks. By Ivan Bates. A sunny new version of the nursery ryhme with endpapers that include an easy-to-play musical score for the companion tune.
We're Going on a Bear Hunt. Retold by Michael Rosen and illustrated by Helen Oxenbury. A classic tale for toddlers and preschoolers with art by a two-time winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal, England's equivalent of the Caldecott.
How This Night Is Different. By Elisa Albert. Fresh, funny and often bawdy stores about young Jews searching for meaning in rituals and activities such as a circumcision, a bat mitzvah, a Passover seder, and a packaged tour of Auschwitz.
Best Person Rural: Essays of a Sometime Farmer. By Noel Perrin. The late, great esssayist and Vermont farmer on life with cows, woodstoves, a sugarhouse, and tourists.
How to Be Well-Versed in Poetry. By E. O. Parrott. When your knowledge of verse/Almost couldn't be worse/Get help from this book/And its clever hook.
An Outlaw Thanksgiving. By Emily Arnold McCully. A Caldecott Medalist casts Butch Cassidy as a Victorian Robin Hood in a picture book for 4-to-8-year olds.
For One More Day: A Novel. By Mitch Albom. A novel by the author of Tuesdays with Morrie, written a third-grade reading level, according to the readbility statistics on Microsoft Word.
Was She Pretty? By Leanne Shapton. An art director's quirky book of captioned black-and-white line drawings about the "ex" factor in romance.
The Marriage Diaries: A Novel. By Rebecca Campbell. A British-accented gross-out novel about a young couple with the seven-year-itch.
A Star Is Found: Our Adventures Casting Some of the Biggest Movies in Hollywood. By Janet Hirshenson and Jane Jenkins with Rachel Kranz. Veteran casting directors tell how they matched stars like Julia Robert and Tom Cruise with roles.
Entre Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl. By Debra Ollivier. After a decade in France, an American explains why French women are different from you and me. Hint: It's not just that they're thinner.
The Song of Names: A Novel. By Norman Lebrecht. A slow-paced but intelligent story about the effects of the Holocaust, written by a fearless English critic who won the Whitbread First Novel Award for the book.
Beauty Junkies: Inside Our $15 Billion Obsession with Cosmetic Surgery. By Alex Kuczynski. An impressive blend of reporting and social commentary that may stand for years as a definitive book on the 21st-century cosmetic surgery boom.
Lisey's Story: A Novel. By Stephen King. Books I didn't finish, #1.
My Husband Betty: Love, Sex and Life With a Crossdresser. By Helen Boyd. The true story of a journalist's marriage to a tranvestite that is part memoir, part polemic, and part self-help manual.
Anonymous Lawyer: A Novel. By Jeremy Blachman. The moral climate of Animal Farm pervades a dark satire of $625-an-hour lawyers and the associates they torment.
October 2006
My Paris. By Gail Scott. Experimental fiction. Punctuated. Like this. Not like. Gopnik. Or Le Divorce.
The Life of Samuel Johnson. By James Boswell. The mother of all biographies, written by a man unfailingly willing to play Gracie Allen to his subject's George Burns.
Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York. By Gail Parent. A dark satire of pre-Sex and the City mating rituals in New York that still towers over most of the books in its class.
Collected Stories: Noel Coward. By Noel Coward. Who knew that the playwright also wrote wonderful short stories?
Toxic Bachelors. By Danielle Steel. Nasty stereotypes of Jews and others masquerading as a fairy tale.
Pure Pleasure. By John Carey. Fifty modern classics reconsidered in 800-word essays by one of England's best critics.
Save Karyn. By Karyn Bosnak. The godmother of Internet panhandling tells how she got out of debt by asking for cash from strangers on the Web.
Cheaper by the Dozen. By Frank B. Gilbreth and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey. The hilarious story of a rambunctious family of 12 children, sold short in the movie starring Steve Martin.
Late for Work. By David Tucker. A newspaper editor writes about his work and makes it work in a prize-winning book of poetry.
Love You, Mean It: A True Story of Love, Loss, And Friendship. By Patricia Carrington, Julia Collins, Claudia Gerbasi, and Ann Haynes with Eve Charles. A memoir by four 9/11 widows whose acquaintances told them, "It could be worse."
God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible. By Adam Nicolson. An engaging work of popular history about the making of "the greatest work of prose ever written in English."
Buying Dad: One Woman's Search for the Perfect Sperm Donor. By Harlyn Aizley. The true story of two lesbians who looked for the father of their child in tank of liquid nitrogen.
Mystic River. By Dennis Lehane. Clint Eastwood shows, as with The Bridges of Madison County, that he's a good director of bad books.
I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman. By Nora Ephron. An essay collection by the screenwriter for Sleepless in Seattle, who takes aim at saccharine books on "mellow menopause."
The Man Who Fell Into a Puddle: Israel Lives. By Igal Sarna. A former tank commander reports elegantly on the lost souls of modern Israel.
Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling: Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling/Career Strategies for Asians: The Essential Guide to Getting In, Moving Up, and Reaching the Top. By Jane Hyun. A former HR executive says that Asian-Americans can succeed at work partly by — surprise, surprise — "networking" and "mentoring."
The History Boys. By Alan Bennett. The script for a tragicomedy about the purpose of education, which won a Tony Award for best play.
The Emperor's Children. By Claire Messud. The emperor's children wear clichés.
Posted by Janice Harayda
(c) 2006 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.


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On July 13, Buzzfeed.com posted a 13-minute audio clip of the speech.
Up until now the reports on what Rice said at the confab have come from what are called surrogates. It is quite clear that their testimonies were stage managed and designed to create a media stir. According to Buzzfeed, one person said he "was surprised by the red meat rhetoric employed by Rice, who has largely eschewed the political arena in recent years, devoting her time instead to an academic career at Stanford. "She's either very worried about a socialist threat to America, or she wants to be Vice President," the surrogate said.
Of course, Rice has consistently said she not interested in being a candidate but as soon as a Drudge Report—citing other unnamed surrogates—suggested she was "near the top" on Romney's list of potential running mates, the speculation took wings. It could have been a real trial balloon. The Republicans have a problem; opinion polls indicate no enthusiasm for any of the other names that have been thrown into the hat. It has been suggested that the whole hullabaloo was concocted to divert public attention from the unfolding story about the former Massachusetts governor's days as head of Bain Capital. That could be, but the remarks Rice made in Utah are also a window into the foreign policy views that turn rich Republicans on these days.
With Romney standing at her side while she spoke, Rice told the suits that the Obama presidency has been a failure, and in a period of "dangerous, chaotic times," has led to an international crisis. She accused the current administration of displaying weakness on the world stage, engaging in class warfare, and employing failed economic policies at home.
According to Buzzfeed the comments that got her the first standing ovation were about the domestic situation. "It is a narrative that is being pushed by our current president, that 'I'm doing poorly because you're doing well,'" she said. "That has never been the American narrative. Ours has never been a narrative of aggrievement, and ours has never been a narrative of entitlement."
Later, Rice declared, "It is time for all of us, in any way we can, to mobilize, get our act together, and storm Washington D.C." That got the audience on their feet again.
The theme of Rice's remarks on foreign policy centered on attacking the President's unwillingness to more forcefully assert U.S. power, his refusal to ascribe to "American exceptionalism" the way she says Romney has, and her charge that Obama has allowed U.S. policy to be "governed by the lowest common denominator collective will of the so-called international community of the United Nations."
"What we're feeling most is not just that tumult, we've been through tumult before," Rice said. "What we're feeling is the absence of American leadership."
"When our friends aren't certain that they can count on us — and they aren't so certain now — and when our foes don't fear us or respect us, this is what you get: tumultuous, dangerous chaotic times,"
Rice was part of the group of foreign policy hawks known of as "The Vulcans" that advised George W. Bush during his campaign and went on to form a core group in his Administration, herself as National Security Adviser, and later Secretary of State.
Condoleezza Rice will not be the next vice-president of the U.S. She won't be the party's nominee. (But, she could be positioning herself – or is being positioned – for a place in a possible Romney administration.) While the idea of her on the ticket drew some favorable comment from some members of the Republican establishment, including rightwing hawk William Kristol of the Weekly Standard, the suggestion elicited howls from much of the right. Most of it has centered on her position on reproductive rights and immigration where she and Romney are not on the same page. Some of it relates to her association with the foreign policy of the Bush Administration, something the Romney campaign tries to avoid discussing.
Meanwhile, the idea of Rice on the ticket drew some flak from another quarter – supporters of the policies of the Israeli government. Morton Klein, the national president of the Zionist Organization of America and a frequent critic of the Obama administration, sounded a similar note. He was quoted by the Jewish Telegraph Agency this week as saying. "It understandably would be concerning to us if he's picking somebody who shows herself to be hostile to Israel and to U.S.-Israel relations." Klein, who often criticized Rice when she was secretary of state, continued, "She pressed Israel to make one-sided concessions while not making sure the Palestinians fulfilled their obligations."
"Choosing Condoleezza Rice would inject tremendous excitement into the campaign and remove all suspense from the outcome," conservative columnist George Will said on ABC's "This Week" last Sunday. "You would have such an uproarious convention in Tampa. You'd have perhaps a third party. You'd have a challenge to her on the floor. You'd have walkouts of delegations, and he'd lose 40 states."
On his very rightwing RedState blog Erick Erickson called the notion of Rice on the ticket "silly," adding, "I don't know who is hitting the crack rock tonight in the rumor mill, but bull shiitake mushrooms."
On some of the further out rightwing Internet outlets the language used to reject a Rice candidacy have been – how do you put this? –well, outright racist.
On the other hand, even as it became clear she would not be selected vice-presidential candidate, the Boston Herald endorsed her, reporting that she had been a "superstar" at the Utah moneybags gathering. Noting Rice's comment about the alleged absence of U.S world leadership, it said editorially, "That is at the heart of what has gone seriously wrong with American foreign policy and rarely has it been articulated so boldly and succinctly."
The editors of The Independent in Britain took the Rice rumor seriously, editorializing on the subject July 15, and warning that, "She also has political baggage, both as the adviser who told Bush Sr. not to back Ukrainian independence, and as National Security Adviser in the run-up to the Iraq war. Raising such ghosts may do the Republican cause more harm than good." The newspaper concludes, "Condi is an interesting suggestion; but she is absolutely the wrong choice. Unless, of course, one is a Democrat."
Carl Bloice, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, is a columnist for the Black Commentator. He also serves on its editorial board.


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Travel and Adventure: Good times, good deed at Arbor Day Farm
By Glenda Winders
Creators Syndicate
It's too bad the Disney parks have laid claim to the phrase "happiest place on Earth" because I would make the argument that the title rightfully belongs to Arbor Day Farm in Nebraska City, Neb.
This is where the Arbor Day commemoration took root, and it's also where those tiny trees in plastic tubes come from when people make donations to the cause of reforestation — the Arbor Day Foundation's No. 1 goal. There's a cheerful, wholesome feeling around the farm that seems to begin with the employees. From the engineer who runs the heating system at the lodge to the tractor driver in the orchards and the guides who teach visitors about the trees, there is a sense that people really do — to borrow from Disney again — whistle while they work.
"Our vision is to be a leader in recognizing how trees are a solution to climate change," said Doug Farrar, vice president of the farm. "It's beautiful and peaceful here. I love my job."
Today the 260-acre farm in the hills of the Missouri River Valley is a bustling hive of agricultural research and visitors coming to explore the forest. But it began more simply when J. Sterling Morton, who would eventually become President Grover Cleveland's secretary of agriculture, staked a claim in the essentially treeless Nebraska Territory in the mid 1800s. He and his wife, Carrie, built a modest home that would grow as their success did. Then they began populating the prairie with trees. While Morton worked as editor of the local newspaper, his passion was to teach people about agriculture and forestry. Eventually he founded Arbor Day, which was first celebrated on April 10, 1872, and continues to the present on the last Friday of April — this year the 25th.
While the 52-room mansion, modeled after the White House and called Arbor Lodge, is a separate property, it is easily accessible from the farm. Tours are available on summer and fall weekends.
The two hubs of activity on the actual farm are Lied Lodge (more about that later) and the Tree Adventure attraction, which is where the fun happens. It begins at the Woodland Pavilion, where visitors of all ages can watch an entertaining movie about the role trees have played in major motion pictures and learn more at interactive educational kiosks.
From there they can hike deep into the woods on a series of connected trails, play in the 50-feet-high Canopy Tree House or examine a bee hive, animal bones, and leaf and seed collections at the Nature Explore Club Cabin. During Arbor Day weekend and Nebraska City's Applejack Festival in September (this year the 19th and 20th) they can also climb trees in the safety of a harness. And guests are always welcome to visit the greenhouse where a quarter of a million seedlings are grown and prepared for shipping each year.
At the Discovery Ride Depot, they climb aboard a tractor-drawn wagon to ride through the orchards and fields and learn about a variety of conservation practices. A stop at the Preservation Orchard yields samples of heirloom apples, wine-tasting, apple-tasting and caramel apples, and the farm's signature apple cider slushies wait at the Apple House Market and Pie Garden Cafe.
"It's edu-tainment for ages 4 to 84," Farrar said. "We want people to take action, to think and act differently."
Groups of visitors who come for meetings, retreats or reunions can prearrange vineyard tours, wine-tasting, a tree-identification tour, apple- or cherry-picking (in season), a hayride or private bonfire complete with s'mores. They can also plan commemorative tree plantings for special occasions. The original Morton Barns have been restored to accommodate weddings and other special events.
Guests are also welcome to observe the experimental areas of the farm. Currently there is a 16-acre hazelnut field, where researchers are working to combine the best characteristics of several species to produce a strain suitable to many environments. The nuts are nutritious for both humans and animals, and the goal is to grow them in less-than-ideal climates, thus making them an alternative to traditional row crops.
Promoting the growth of shade-grown coffee in Central and South America is another project in which farm researchers are involved. In this way they can help save rainforests that would otherwise be cut down to make way for sunshine. The achievement of this goal would maintain the habitats of rainforest wildlife and the source of many medicinal plants.
But back to Lied Lodge. Staying right on the property is part of the fun, and being at this "hotel" has a camplike feel despite creature comforts such as a spa, Olympic-size indoor swimming pool and nearby 18-hole Arborlinks golf course. The types of wood in the different rooms are identified — the Timber Dining Room, for example, is built from butternut and the Upper Lobby of pecan. Guests are invited to curl up by a fireplace in the Library Lounge, perhaps with a glass of wine and a book they've chosen from the nature-related library.
The lodge was built of timbers from forests that utilize Forest Stewardship management plans, and the windows, lighting and plumbing systems are all designed to be energy- and water-efficient. In the dining room, the chef cooks with locally grown produce and serves wines from the property. At the conference center office supplies are all environment-friendly. Every guest room has a set of recycling bins, and even the room keys are made from recycled PVC. The whole place is kept cool in the summer and warm in the winter by a biomass heating and cooling plant that utilizes wood chips sourced from old wooden shipping pallets. Visitors are encouraged to take a self-guided tour of the plant, which is open until 7 p.m. every day.
The learning and fun that go on here are worth the trip, but it's also nice to know that every dime travelers spend goes toward the foundation's mission of planting, nurturing and celebrating trees. Not all the trees they grow are here, of course. The foundation funds forests across the nation from which trees are transported to reforest areas devastated by natural disasters such as fires and tornadoes.
As an added bonus, every person who visits goes home with a tree to plant. Not bad to go on vacation and come home with a way to help save the world!
Visitors to Arbor Day Farm fly into Omaha and then make a 45-minute drive south. The farm is an easy addition to an Omaha trip or a visit to Lincoln, the state capital. Nebraska City is small but has a surprising number of museums and art galleries that are worth a look.
The farm is located at 2611 Arbor Ave., Nebraska City, Neb. The lodge is open all the time, and summer hours for the Tree Adventure are Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $7 for adults and $5 for children 3-12. The Discovery Ride has an additional charge of $4 for adults and $3 for children.
For more information about joining the foundation or visiting the farm: www.arbordayfarm.org.


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What to Watch: Kelly Osbourne hospitalized after seizure on 'Fashion Police' set
Trending topic
Kelly Osbourne has confirmed that she had a seizure on the set of "Fashion Police" yesterday, according to Yahoo News. Osbourne tweeted an update about her condition last night, saying "Thank U all 4 UR beautiful well wishes. Yes I did have a seizure they are just trying to figure out why?" She also posted a picture oh her arm hooked up to an IV. Osbourne was treated just two weeks ago for a sprained ankle after she fell in a bathroom.
On TV
"Grimm" returns tonight, and it is all about Nick. Nick is investigating his own crime, Nick learns the truth about Juliette and Captain Renard, Sergeant Wu responds to a shooting at Nick's house. Nick, Nick, Nick. NBC 9 p.m. EST.
Hot video: Group sets new record for most people wearing fake mustaches
GateHouse News Service


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Front Runners List: Click to see list completion progress by climbers that log their climbs using Peakbagger.com.
Compare Climbers: Click to compare ascents of up to 5 climbers working on this list.
Note that this list is not the same as the Official AMC New England 4000-footer List. This list is similar, but it is based on strict mathematical cutoffs derived from careful reading of the USGS topographic maps. The differences are:
It is not clear why the official AMC lists are inconsistent in the way they interpret the USGS contours, unless they have better surverying data used as criteria for their lists.
Caution: These books feature many of the peaks on this list, but may not have information on all of them.
= Peak with Rank #1 on List;   = Other Peaks
This page has been served 2717396 times since 2004-11-01.


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So just because one video game got cancelled, you guys are going to hold a grudge against Disney as a whole? All the movies, shows, games, parks, merchandise, memories, everything...just because of one video game? I'm sorry but honestly, how could you really call yourself a Disney fan if you're gonna be like that?
Things get cancelled all the time. There are so many lost scrapped or cancelled things in Disney's history, and this is just another one. I'd understand people getting this upset about it if Disney Infinity was a huge thing with a giant following...but honestly, outside of this forum and some fan sites, this game wasn't like, 'mainstream' popular. And I understand that it doesn't have to be, and that it means a lot to a lot of people, but I think there's gonna have to be a point where you realize that this was just a video game.
And to swear off and be angry at Disney as a whole, just because of a video game...well, it just seems kind of childish. This is not targeted at anyone in particular, just in general based on the reactions I've been seeing from people.